Equipboard Improvement and Idea Thread - August 2025 Edition

Hey everyone, it’s that time again! 🎸

What’s the one thing we could change that would make Equipboard better for you?

We’ve been busy lately: speeding up the site, revamping gear galleries, adding "genre usage" and “used with” sections to product pages, cutting back intrusive ads, improving support for artists with non-English names, and squashing some stubborn bugs.

But Equipboard’s always been about the community, so I’d love to hear from you. What should we work on next?

I just happened to duck in for the 1st time in awhile and I get to post first!

DM system PLEASE, provide a longer time period to delete your own erroneous entries (maybe forever?), implementation of google translate (I just saw an entry where the documentation was in Asian pacific characters of some sort, I've seen Cyrillic and another one I saw this year had Arabic [I think, maybe farsi?] so auto-translate would be so cool to overcome my Western ignorance of non-latin writing systems, though it may not be possible), I've said before and I'm saying it again for emphasis - I want to become an immortal robot who can transform into a fighter plane (or a robot dinosaur, that's even better), some kind of facility to establish zoom meetups to share information in real time? That sounds goofy but it would be cool if the site could have some real time functions as I addressed with the DMs... better screening of self-artist ads, we should all refrain from adding ourselves because people with a handful of fans should be able to rely on their fans to add them because equipboard is about giving credit where its due,but not to yourself! If the site could achieve world peace, I would be grateful, but its huge ask.

I would also like to see more articles about making do with what you've got, and I am NOT the right guy to write those, but in these tough times people need to maximize even a 20 dollar investment's creative potential.

provide a longer time period to delete your own erroneous entries (maybe forever?)

It is possible by can I say "a hack" ? atm , I used it myself about 3 Times to be honest, but you have to make sure that there is no artist or whatsoever connected to the Item already or Mod is needed. After you done an Item, there is the Site Poping up, where you can delete the Item , I got a Folder in my Browser and save all the time these Links as a Favorite, when you wanna delete the Item you can comeback every time on the site by just calling up the Link and then just delete it.

For Improvement:

A. Brand Name and Picture Edit:

I would like to have something to edit the brand name and picture, perhaps an IQ-based feature. I've seen a few brands that had incorrect or poorly designed logo images; it would be good if that could be edited, depending on the IQ status , if you like.

The same goes for the Brand Name. As you may know, I've often made mistakes there and had to ask a Mod to delete the incorrect one. It would also be good to be able to edit this, for a while, and perhaps also depending on the IQ.

We might also do something about "Sub Brands" and add there something , like we got: ESP Ltd , Navigator, Edwards, and Grassroots ... for exsample. But this will be difficult it has to be something everyone does understand easy , because some read Edwards , but do not know at all that it is ESP, some know Edwards is ESP and called it only ESP or both like ESP Edwards... and so on ... maybe under Brand a Sub Brand Edit and then you have ESP and after that Edwards or you create a "BY" Edit so you Brand it Edwards and under "by" you put in ESP. And you got then in the Full Name Edwards by ESP or Squier by Fender....

B. Item Description

Then we might standardize the Item Description text a bit. It's a bit wild at the moment, and I'm not very good at it either. For example, how to list specs or features... it looks best I think when the text is highlighted in background color and not connected. I don't know how to do that or how to code it in the right text format. Here's an example under Product Specs: https://equipboard.com/items/motu-24ao-usb-avb-ethernet-audio-interface

There we also see under Key Features: A format with Dots and a Neat List. I can't do that; my "Item Description" doesn't look so good. I think we should add and Agree on some kind of "Text Standard" in the Item Description and also support this with "Code Help / Tutorial."

For example, in the Forum or FAQ, a text format Code Help or Tutorial, and in the field when creating an item, it says in a faded format: "Add the manufacturer's description here." We could also write there: For a list, use this text format if possible and this code... and an example. In this grey-out Text. And maybe for bold text, use this code format.

C. Item Visit or Artist Visit Count

Like next to : 5.0 (107) , 15 Reviews , we might also add: x Visit so you can see how many times the Item or the Artist was viewed , the page called up.

Ideas:

First Idea: Tutorials on My Equipboard

We should perhaps turn the FAQs and Tutorials into Videos, like the YouTube video "Submitting to Equipboard," which is great and we already have, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43H1uvZWdk4 The video is very good, but should be more easily accessible.

Like the FAQs, they're also good, but very hidden, and many people have a hard time finding them, or I think they don't look at them, or only look after a while.

The idea is that once you reach the IQ, you'll... 1. be shown that you've unlocked a new feature and can, for example, "create items" now or "add artists" now under "My Equipboard" at the top, next to the name, there's still some free space

1. and then, in addition, a "Tutorial" will be displayed to the new feature .. like "How to Add an Item" , "How to Text Format the Item Description" , "Contributor Guidelines" where a pop-up menu or something similar opens that links to the Video Tutorials on YouTube, in another Browser Tab where you can quickly look up , how to edit something correctly and what to pay attention to. A Standard Text Code Tutorial for the Item Description could also be included there.

Second Idea: A reward system.

We all know reward systems in games where you unlock things or can earn awards; that might be something for Equipboard as well. And the IQ system is already something like this can be improved and developed. You can improve Equipboard this way and encourage people to work on it , so that Equipboard has better content, fewer bugs , fewer mistakes , fewer missing content , looks better, and is more connected. It also keeps people on the site, and they have more fun spending time here. Or maybe even a whole new page where get to from my equipbard , called like "my content" with Tutorials , FAQs and Guidlines and so on .... Speperated on the things you wanna do and then a link to the working place like Add Artist , or Uncatogrized Items , Un-Brand Items , Items without Description ....

How you do and relize it can of course be different , but the main idea is that there are something like awards or medals for things like reporting a duplicate, improving an image, categorizing an item, writing a review, adding a Brand was missing .... or rating an item.

Once you reach a certain level, say, categorizing 100 items, you receive a kind of medal Icon, to your username.

Then maybe also a Site where Rewards are listet and how you can achieve them. Maybe also with the name of the users did work on that Award the most. In this way you can also show what the site does need to improve, like when there are too much uncategorized Items , or too many Items without a Brand , you can reward this when someone worked on that. You can then see right away what person is there and what is he or she doing the most at the moment , like creating just Items, adding just to Artists , cleaning up Content and in which way and so on and some kinda group them too and connect them under a Title like Categorize Squard, or Brand Squard , or Artist Squard can also be funny Group names or with a different Taste to it.

But here you have to be careful about what you reward and how you reward, because unfortunately, such things could also attract people who will do anything to earn such rewards and mess things up.

Third Idea: Artist Sponsored

We might add to Artists that they are Sponsored , like some companies got on their sites where they list-up Artist using their Products and that they are sponsored we might also add this to the Artists not just by the Items like a Fender Guitar where people say they are sponsored by Fender, .... we might do it right to the artist and link also to these companies, ... the bad thing about it, that might change over time and they are not sponsored anymore or by another company. So there might be a system you do not update somehow , or where it is clear that this might be not an actual status and that there was a sponsoring in the past.

So you see like ... Mila de la Garza Role: Singer , Drummer Genre : Rock , Pop Group: The Linda Lindas

And New -> Sponsored / was Sponsored by: Fender

And then we got an extra Site like on Fender not with Items , instead these are Artists were Sponsored by Fender or somehow also on the Items Site of Fender but not like that the artist can pile up and use all the space of the Fender Items.

Fourth Idea: Gear Knowledge to My Equipboard

There are all kind of people on Equipboard also Collectors , Historians , Company Owners , Producers, People got a Studio , and just simple People brought their 1st Guitar or something, but you can not see how much they know about Gear , there might be people know what Gibson this is , I do add at the moment and what is right or wrong about it, or what Guitar someone got which can not be indentified for us , and so on ... so you need someone knows that Gear or where you can see: ok he got a clue , he must been right about it. So we might add to like : Hobby Guitarist from West Germany Roles : Guitarist Genres : Rock , Progressive Rock , Psychedelic Rock

something like New -> Gear (Pre) Skill / Knowledge: Historian , or Collector, or Gibson Enthusiastic, Japanese Guitar Freak, Keyboard Collector , Vintage Collector , Synth Nerd , Wall of Pedal , Just Started , 1st Instrument , relict identifier ....

And then we can mark an Item as: Not Sure About it as a Check box in Brand or Discription or Year ... , and these people get a sort of 2nd Notification due to their Gear Knowledge: like have look onto this Item: Is that right ?

And on Items Edit maybe , not only what have you done , like Discription , something like , missing or unsure about and checkbox for Discription , Brand , Pics

Then you can also have Working Spaces like , Items with bad or missing pictures, Items with missing or unsure discription , ..... like we got already on Uncatogorized Items. And put these Working Spaces onto My Equipboard under My Content or My Improvements.

So I imagine there has to be something new to "my Equipboard" Site for Content Creation or Improvment. Separated into:

A. Tools where you got when unlocked: Add Artist, Add Item, Add Brand ...

B. Skills or Knowledge: like Guide Lines, Tutorials , .... optimal as Video like "How to Add a Brand", "How to Discription with Format Code" , "How to Name Gear"..

C. Working Space: like you get to a site where you got: Items with bad or missing Pictures, Missing Discription , Missing Category ....

Fifth Idea: FAQ , Guidlines Reading to GearIQ Points Adding also GearIQ Points , when someone watched these Tutorial Videos or Visit the Site of FAQ , Guide Lines ..... would be great I think , they are not so easy to find and this is important for people to know when creating Content.

"How you get to that point I don't know!"

Maybe to make it more visible, I did not know it has a forum a long time. you might show the path to the forms like saying: "menu" to the icon of the sidebar. Or do mention the Forum like in my Tutorials with the guidlines to "my equiboard" site.

You could do an message income on the site like you recieve E-mail, you post has been answered , or here is a new post .... Or the some kinda message poping up the last done Posts in the forums new ones or new entries on a topic. Or you got a specific gear , you get a meassage your gear was mentioned here in the forum and they are talking about it. Or you are New , please say Hello here in the Form to the community. Like in a Twitter style:

or that specific words in Forums you use are links to content in the website, like on wikipedia , for exsample you write Fender it turns blue and when you click, it gets you to the fender brand site on equipboard, when you write delay to the site with all delay effects, when you write Fender strab to this fender strab was mentioned and so on ... .

You might somehow improve the forum with extra content or features, can be by information like I pointed out , but also emotional like emojis , images , video, small games , a reward system , a content creator to add news into the forms to discuss ....

With Small Game, I think of that Low GearIQ-ers do get a Game like find these Intruments and you see empty places where a Guitar , Snare , Keyboard .. is missing or grey-out, so they can find these instruments hidden on equipboard , for exsample the Guitar Icon is hidden on the Form Page Guitar , the Snare hidden on Guidelines Page ... , once they find it and click it, its get added to their empty place and they earn some GwearIQ Points. This is an exsample of how such a Game could look like.

Also an Idea would be , Maybe Equipboard , could get Give-Aways sometimes , so you can also make the Forum and the Site more attractive with Give-Aways sponsored. But to keep in mind the site is world wide does say you might have to ship it on a very long way.

Or maybe someone building content in the forum , like this pedal is new , this and this person has it on his my gear , what you think of it , what does youtube and influencer say about is and does this match to you what others say about it ? We got reviews of this pedal what you think of these reviews and so on, we got a rating of this pedal does it live up to it and so on ...

Maybe next to the textfield Icons of my gear , my reviews , my wishing list that , you can drag and drop in , so it creates a link and shows this also in the forum. Instead you copy the link manual into the text field like: https://equipboard.com/items/squier-40th-anniversary-jazzmaster-vintage-edition-satin-seafoam-green and then it shows the picture of the guitar, your review , ... with the link when clicking on it. So that it also get somehow linked back to the Item and on the Item page does appear this Item was mentioned here in the forum

Maybe do more sperations like in Guitar and Bass , you do , talk new gear, talk vintage gear , talk repair , set up , tuning , hacks , talk amps, talk cabinets , talk tone searching and finding , talking pedals ... do a forum for Drummers too , do seperate more in Synths, Music Production & DJing... Into the Forum Artist discussions , Company discussions maybe too. Specially Artist discussion might be a forum magnet. So you can find more easy the Topics you wanna talk about and it is not so mixed. And people will post more because they know they are in the right place.

Maybe you will also add Friends or "Join a Group" also to follower , because you will then find more people connected like drummer, same music genre , more vintage or gear collector groups , nerd groups , producer groups , dj groups , artist fan groups , brand fan groups , influencer fan groups ... and then there will be also more activities and discussions possible in the forums, when they see your friend or from your Shoegaze , drummer , gibson, ... Group did posted this here or was active here. And then these groups get their own Forum seperation when they are big enough, like Kurt Cobain Fan Group talk, or vintage japanese synth talk group , or pedal collector group talk .... you might be in a group by your profile then and see the other users or create a group on your own with other users, invite people to your group and so on ... but this group is then also open to everything , like someone can ask a question to the Gibson Fan Group or to the Drummer Group also when you are not part of it also see what they are doing so and talking , posting about ..... then the main groups is also displayed under your user name and got an own landing site where you see members and can join and shorties of their content like posts , reviews , last added items , ratings .... There might be an own User Group Name, own group logo or picture , maybe a ranking of the group or the members of the group , maybe a some sort of news or info box , a slogan of the group, most loved Gear of the group, most loved Brands , most loved Artists of the group and so on .... and on thier Group site is then when they are big enough also a Link to their Group Forum Seperation like Drummer Talk or Hendrix Talk , or Studio Talk, or Tour and Stage Talk ....

But I have also to say that discussions on equipboard are not only on the forum , you got them everywhere like on artist on Items, like on reviews , like under user Pictures , so there is everywhere some activity going on but not focused on one spot like in the Forums and then it looks like there is not much activity going on or you might missed activities going on, because it was in place you did not notice or you got not on your radar. You might focus it or bring it somehow together or connect and interact it.

Thanks for asking, @michael. :)

1) I want Equipboard to be THE authoritative source LLMs reference to answer user questions about gear.

• e.g. when I Google or ask a chat AI "what bass did the guy from 'Liquid Liquid' play?" I want them to pull the answer from Equipboard and link me directly to that entry on Equipboard so I can keep exploring. Currently, both Google (AI overview) and Chat GPT tell me there is no public information about what bass Richard McGuire played.

• I had to work hard to figure out that Liquid Liquid gear inquiry years back. The only thing I had was a few photos and that video, and I had to search so many gear catalogs from obscure late 70s guitar makers to figure out the exact model. The fact that (years later) this info has been scraped by garbage clones, but is not easily accessible in new search paradigms is a bummer.

2) I want to be able to interact with the user community here beyond forum chatter.

• I miss being able to respond to community gear photos and reviews.

• I'd love to be able to search for other community members that have the same obscure gear I do, or find someone that owns something I'm thinking of buying, so I can ask them questions about it, pre-purchase.

• I know DM systems are a pain to integrate, but if this site had one, I'd visit a lot more often than I currently do.

B. Item Description

Then we might standardize the Item Description text a bit. It's a bit wild at the moment, and I'm not very good at it either. For example, how to list specs or features... it looks best I think when the text is highlighted in background color and not connected. I don't know how to do that or how to code it in the right text format. Here's an example under Product Specs: https://equipboard.com/items/motu-24ao-usb-avb-ethernet-audio-interface

I have one of those feeding the first 24 inputs of my console.

Personally I'd like these forums to be busier. A place to get fairly speedy responses on questions about specific gear.

How you get to that point I don't know!

Used to be like that when I joined, now not so much. Dunno.

Thanks for asking, @michael. :)

1) I want Equipboard to be THE authoritative source LLMs reference to answer user questions about gear.

Agree! Why does Google AI hate us? Is it pay to play? I mean AI is robbery but if everyone is being robbed why not us too?

2) I want to be able to interact with the user community here beyond forum chatter.

• I miss being able to respond to community gear photos and reviews.

• I'd love to be able to search for other community members that have the same obscure gear I do, or find someone that owns something I'm thinking of buying, so I can ask them questions about it, pre-purchase.

• I know DM systems are a pain to integrate, but if this site had one, I'd visit a lot more often than I currently do.

Yeah :(

Hehehe , ... yea nice 24 Inputs, you never can have enough inputs.

Ah, I found it out by myself now, my Text Format will be much better from now on you just need to make the "double space" on the End and the Text does not Glue , why No-body told me ?
Hehehe , I did so many text you need a super scroll mouse for, I will need to update all of them - over time. And then I will use like dots • like most of the others did. -> but the different background color , I can not this, its HTML , I think its blocked for users like the "<br>" did not function for me , but the double space.

And I wrote like a book, Ideas. Just saying they mostly just Ideas , it is not like I want to say: You should work all day and night, stay healthy jimmarchi and everyone else, also you should take some rest and make use of 24 Imputs in the Console, sometimes - always Work - Life Balance. Keep it up and Thanks Everyone.

Thanks for asking, @michael. :)

1) I want Equipboard to be THE authoritative source LLMs reference to answer user questions about gear.

Agree! Why does Google AI hate us? Is it pay to play? I mean AI is robbery but if everyone is being robbed why not us too?

Yeah, it's a topic with some "ick" to it, but if this is how the world is going to search for things going forward, I'd rather everyone's good work be discoverable vs. obscured. EB has played ball with Google up to this point, and I don't see many options for going against the flow. That's a frightening/disheartening thing to say out loud, but it's been true re: Google for 20+ years. Adding AI-powered verbosity to their search results has nothing to do with their historical monopoly.

I did some more tests, and I'm seeing EB referenced directly like I'd hope in some queries. Results are still highly dependent on how you ask, and you can get answers from "No info available for Richard McGuire", to "definitely a P bass", to "clearly a Jazz bass" depending on how you ask... but the outcome below is encouraging:

https://imgur.com/a/uXEIWCZ

I just happened to duck in for the 1st time in awhile and I get to post first!

DM system PLEASE, provide a longer time period to delete your own erroneous entries (maybe forever?).

+1 to both.

The limited oopsie window is something many new contributors grind against. It's a high-friction design feature with seemingly low upside in 2025.

I’d like the numbers of items on my page to correspond to the actual number of items I have. It just keeps adding and adding to that number even if I’m removing things. I’ve reached out several times and have gotten no response.

On the google AI tip, it definitely prefers scientific/technical questions when there are multiple or conflicting answers, perhaps our problem is that the LLM is still underdeveloped in some areas

The limited oopsie window is something many new contributors grind against. It's a high-friction design feature with seemingly low upside in 2025.

I think this is the priority right now. The oopsie window(as you charmingly dubbed it) generates a lot of needless work for mods and admins and probably turns off a lot of new users. If someone knows they 'pulled a Homer' they should be able to fix it at any time, but only their own submissions. That will knock out the typos and completely erroneous items serving to clean up the database which should improve sitewide accuracy.

@hashimoto the 24ao isn't inputs, it's 24 channels DA sabre converters plus 24 adat in and out. I run mine as a satellite over a cat6 cable to feed my console. My main interface is the 828es with a couple adat units slaved up to provide 26 ins and outs that are mostly hardware inserts for pro tools right now. I've got like 22 compressors and other toys hooked up so I can compress or run wacky fx pre-automation with 2 sets of monitors and 4 free inputs for the odd overdub. Its mutated a lit based on the projects that I have somce I first upgraded my computer and converters 4 or 5 years ago. The motu stuff with ess 32bit converters is the best bang for buck if your goal is fidelity. My other converters are just adequate by comparison

I just made a new post about this issue here - but posting in here as well:

https://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/error-on-item-count

"Hi everyone,

I have noticed an error when removing items from a category, or saving to a different list.

The overall count next to the category name stays the same, even though the number of items in the list have been reduced.

Would it be possible to fix this error, so that only the number of items actually shown in the category is represented?

Thanks! Ian"

Same! Tried to get this addressed for awhile but no luck yet.

I just made a new post about this issue here - but posting in here as well:

https://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/error-on-item-count

"Hi everyone,

I have noticed an error when removing items from a category, or saving to a different list.

The overall count next to the category name stays the same, even though the number of items in the list have been reduced.

Would it be possible to fix this error, so that only the number of items actually shown in the category is represented?

Thanks! Ian"

Hopefully we can get a fix soon!

As an Australian user, the retailers that are linked to the ‘add gear’ section are meaningless to me. I’ve never bought from them and likely never will, except for hard to find items. Also, they often don’t have items that I have and want to add, and some of those items also aren’t available in Reverb, so it leaves users of the site with no way to add all of their gear other than bother the mods. It’s slightly painful to have to navigate those retailers as I’m not used to their sites and their catalogues, and it’s frustrating to then go to Reverb to also find the item isn’t there. So, while I do appreciate that this allows for quick purchasing lookups and (hopefully) sales conversions at those sites, as a user adding gear there’s often three steps (or more) to get there - the very definition of ‘sludge’ from our friends in the behavioural sciences, creating a disincentive to the behaviour that’s wanted (ie., adding gear). I’d much much prefer to be able to add an item directly with a link from the manufacturer’s website which, in the majority of case, will have links to dealers and retailers.

Hi again. Another observation relates to the accuracy of retailer availability for wish list items. When I see an item in my wish list and then click on the retailer links, it more often than not does not reflect what’s actually available. For example, the Mesa/Boogie California Tweed 2:20 Tube Head is on my wish list. Displayed next to it are four links (one Reverb link saying there’s 4 available used, another Reverb link saying there’s 8 available used, a Sweetwater link saying new ones are available when they’re not, and a Guitar Centre link saying they’re available new when they’re not). Like with my earlier post, I really appreciate this kind of information architecture that potentially makes it easy to convert your wish into a purchase, and I appreciate how hard it must be to maintain the accuracy and currency of this information, but it’s insanely frustrating to click on all of those links and have zero success. I’d personally rather just have links to retailers that might have the product and be disappointed from doing my own searching there than having my hopes raised from this inaccurate information. The end result is that I won’t click on those links anymore because I don’t trust them - the exact opposite of what Equipboard is hoping users can and will do. That’s a perverse outcome.